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My newest fort is basically Hotel California. You can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave — because there’s a swarm of 291 (and growing!) undead outside the barricaded entrance.

I embarked to an evil biome and was pleasantly surprised by the lack of bloodsucking monsters. Then, a vile red slush crept in. It didn’t instantly kill my dwarves so I figured it was harmless. Turns out that it seems to induce unconsciousness through a fever, and suffocates everything to death. Only the two dwarves I had mining the initial base survived. My current goal is to accumulate enough wealth so that the humans will send trade caravans. Then I’m hoping enough will die so that the humans, elves, and goblins will all send armies to Tomeblankets…

I always try to go for some sort of “Hall of Legends” near my Great Hall somewhere, and right after an ambush/siege/tantrum spiral I have my engravers start engraving and my craftsdwarves start making statues. If a legendary dwarf falls in such a battle, chances are they will engrave/make statues of him/her. So I find an engraving of the battle, put the statue of the fallen hero next to it, and put the best coffin I have next to that.

This all comes from a time I named a bunch of my initial dwarves after some friends and myself, and we all died in a glorious battle with about 10 cave dragons, the last of us dying from our wounds, but victorious. I decided to make a tomb next to the great hall to put us in, and some statues to increase the value to stop a tantrum spiral. By sheer chance I inspected my heroes’ tombs and they each had a statue of themselves next to their coffin. And engravings of the battle covered the walls. It was glorious.

Sadly, the next siege had about 100 goblins and 20 cave dragons, and with all my legendary dwarves dead, I didn’t stand a chance.

Work on the guard towers was nearing completion. The mechanics were busy preparing traps for the next inevitable goblin invasion. The windmills were creaking in the crisp mountain air, the crops were in full bloom, and food and ale were plentiful. The marksdwarves complained good-naturedly about having to practice in the sun, but the glare and heat were far preferable to the horrors of cave adaptation. From the barracks came the clanking and grunting of the melee squad honing their skills.

A sudden goblin attack had left the fort wary, and several dwarves had been found in their beds, bloodless and desiccated. A vampire was on the loose somewhere, but it had yet to slip up.

Ringwild’s walls were strong. Its forges were hot, its craftsmen were legend, its halls were vast and opulent. The Windy Grains knew of these treasures, of the riches to be had. And so they came.

The smell of death on the air.

The horror of fifty corpses, trudging in unison towards the walls.

The shrieks of the goblin ambush as they were torn to shreds by rotting hands.

The shouts of dwarven panic as they attempted to close up the walls.

The masons were the first to fall. Fearlessly running to the open wall, hauling stones, attempting to shore up the open wall. Bolts whizzed past them, lodging uselessly in shambling flesh. Decaying hands, ripping, tearing, striking.

The melee squad charged forward. Two corpses fell, three, four, and then the horde was upon them. Dwarf after dwarf, ripped apart, lives cut short at the hands of the undead.

The rest of the fort was soon among the ranks of the dead, raised back into unholy motion by dark powers.

Except one.

He still stood in the main courtyard, axe flashing left to slice off a leg, right to sever an arm, back, forth, an impenetrable wall of razor-sharp iron. He darted from zombie to zombie, reducing the undead to piles of butchered meat. To Ringwild, he was Nomald Cobaltseasons, the elderly, battle-scarred master of the axe.

For months he fought the undead, searching for the invisible masters of the rotting army, to no avail. He fought without tire, without food, and without drink, single-mindledy crushing every undead abomination in his view, seemingly blind to their inevitable reanimation moments later.

Until, one day, he stopped. He hadn’t eaten, hadn’t drank, hadn’t laid down for months.

He dropped his axe.

He wandered, thirsty, back into the halls of Ringwild, but the stocks of alcohol did not beckon him.

He passed the great dining room, with its barrels filled to the brim with the feasts of master chefs, but did not slow.

Nomald walked (slower, now, than before) on the familiar smooth rock towards the masonry, ignoring the piles of furniture that had never been used, would never be used…

And, as the spirits of his restless comrades swirled around the room, he began to carve, slowly, painstakingly, a coffin, and a large slab of rock.

He dragged them both to the center hall of Ringwild; once the Stronghold of the Sabres of Helping, now the Slaughterhouse of the Windy Grains.

He took up hammer and chisel with shaking hands, carved the slab as best he could. Four hundred thirty-two years of life, and not a single engraving to his name.

And, with a final effort, he hauled himself into his coffin. He closed his eyes, and waited for the wailing spirits to end the long, bloody history of Nomald Cobaltseasons, known to the world as Das Clincheddreamy: the Unkempt Word of Splashes, murderer of five dwarves in Ringwild and thousands more across the world; vampire.

I just put to rest my adventurer Sibrek Talonboulder. I should warn the newbies that this post contains spoilers.

Anyway, this dwarven hero single-handedly ushered in a Golden Age by slaying all the bad guys in the world. It got to the point where everyone would just shrug and say “I’m flattered, but I have no use for you” when he offered his services.

A couple of civilizations had demon law-givers or demons posing as gods, and I thought about cleansing the world of them, too, but they didn’t seem to be doing any harm and the people loved them, so in the end I left them alone.

Then I journeyed into the depths of the world, back to the slade temple where I’d found the adamantine scimitar that had made the heroic escapades possible. Down I went into the pit, thinking I’d simply try to kill as many demons as possible — to reduce their numbers a little.

Dayfly brutes swarmed and coughed up some terrible extract, but their chitinous skulls couldn’t withstand the adamantine. An undulating blob of snow stood no chance, for obvious reasons. Bronze insectoids were also a dime a dozen, but were dispatched easily enough with a quick stab to the head. The first sign of trouble was a group of dimetrodon monsters, which actually managed to land a couple of hits and didn’t seem to go down as easily as their smaller companions. The dimetrodons soon became quite many, and were joined by dayfly brutes. The end came in the form of a rib-crushing kick to the upper body, which sent Sibrek flying, shattering a bone in his right arm so he lost his shield. Before he could recover, another dimetrodon which bit off that arm while another kicked off Sibrek’s right foot. Sibrek had just enough time to lodge his sword in the thick skull of one of his aggressors before being reduced to complete mush.

Somewhere deep below the ground, a demonic dimetrodon monster is walking around with an adamantine scimitar stuck in its head.

You have to look at it from their perspective. It’s easy to say that they’re snapping easily when you’re just looking at things from outside the monitor and reading events in lines on the screen.

When a dwarf gets a serious wound, though, they are likely to be maimed for life. It’s not so strange for extremely tough, previously self-reliant types of people to completely flip out when faced with that sort of thing.

And we’re not talking about ‘seeing a rat’. We’re talking about having the fortress that you slaved to create crawling with rats. We’re talking rats and vermin crawling over you while you sleep and eating the food out of your hands.

And don’t forget the other things. Portions of the fortress are covered in noxious, wretched miasmas of decay so thick that they actually obscure your view. Friends and relatives die regularly and are sometimes just left to rot on the ground. Wild raccoons and other horrible monsters are just waiting for the chance to rip out your throat. If you make a mistake or fail to meet a production order, the sheriff cuts you to pieces with an axe. Horrible creatures regularly crawl out of your drinking water and try to murder you in your beds. Filthy new immigrants are constantly being shoved into your fortress’ cramped quarters, forcing you to work yourself down to the bone to get new quarters ready and leaving you with barely enough food to get through the winter. And when food runs out, you’re reduced to grubbing for rats, beetles, and worms in order to survive.

And then, when inspiration finally strikes–when you finally a chance to do what you’ve been dreaming to do for your entire life, the one reason you really went through the hell of this horrible fortress, the one true Dwarven dream–when you finally feel inspiration strike you and can see the form of your artifact in your head, you end up wasting three months doing nothing as your incompetent leaders fail to provide you with the necessary materials. Eventually, the vision begins to fade and you realize you can no longer remember what the artifact you’d waited your entire life for even looks like. Wouldn’t you go mad, too?

Don’t ask why your dwarves go insane or throw tantrums. Ask how they manage to stay sane the rest of the time.